Both articles are at heart about faith, dogma, zealotry, and blasphemy. As is often pointed out, a faith that lacks confidence in itself must create a system of double-think, of coercive consent, because that faith will likely fail entirely if exposed to any sort of critique or evaluation.

The faith cannot abide questions, because it has no respectable answers. So the process must be aborted before it has begun: The orthodoxy must create an emotional reaction of revulsion to any questioning, so prevent the faithful from taking that step.

This emotional reaction is of course the "fainting spells" Wretchard speaks of -- it is not enough for the insecure left to deem a position wrong; if it's merely wrong, it needs to be argued about, and it can't survive that. It must instead be morally aborrent, so that the zealot reacts to the toxin of questioning much like a jogger coming across a decomposing body on the side of the road -- it must be internalized that the correct response to such a horror is to retch, and faint, and call the authorities post-haste.

This is how the leftist faith protects itself from the infection of doubt. (Meanwhile, of course, patting itself on the back for being so open-minded and adept at "negative capacity" and so on and suchlike.)

Political correctness is one of the primary inoculants used, of course; questions of policy must not be questioned (or even thought about terribly hard), but instead an immediate emotional response of hatred, revulsion, shock, horror, and outrage must be instilled in the faithful to short-circuit such blasphemous thoughts.

There is a sidebar thought here, which I always yap about: Leftists, having abandoned conventional, traditional, normal morality (even about murder-- try getting a leftist to have a genuine emotional, moral response of anger to the perpetators of 9/11, or a horrific murder committed by a minority), still have that instinctual drive to render moral judgments and demonstrate moral outrage. But the usual objects of such outrage are foreclosed to them; it would be "unsophsticated" to blame the Muslims who flew the planes in the WTC and Pentagon and Pennsylvania ground for their crimes; it would be "judgmental" to judge a murderous minority for his outrages.

But the impulse to judge, to burst out in moral outrage, still exists in them, and burns as bright in their hearts as in the hearts of any fire-and-brimstone revival preacher. But the natural objects of moral scorn now being deemed off-limits for such scorn, their moral outrage is directed towards other matters. Misdirected, I would say; you can't get an emotional, moral response out of them about the 19 Muslims who killed 2996 people, but bring up Halliburton or the "Trans-Caspian Pipeline" and their eyes will light up with rage.

Similarly with any minority found to have committed an outrageous murder; they will pass on rendering judgment on him, but mention "The System" or "Jim Crow" and you will find on your hands a person ready to judge and all in favor of some retributive justice.

This is why they seem so alien to us: they have trained themselves to not have the natural (and right) feelings of moral outrage about the things they should be morally outraged about, instead directing their outrage about murders and rapes towards... abstractions like "The System" or entirely innocent parties (like "society").

I don't know exactly how that fits in to the blasphemy/innoculant regime, but it's in there somewhere.

Oh: In case it needs to be said, no, I'm not focusing on minority murderers because only minorities commit murders.

It's that leftists do not consider white people a protected class, obviously, so a white murderer is allowed the moral scorn (at least some of it) that is natural and right. A leftist doesn't mind callling a white murderer a scumbag and killer and etc. It's only when the murder is committed by a member of a protected class that they engage their talents of misdirection of moral rage and begin looking to vent their outrage at abstractions and innocent third parties.

And, of course, sometimes the victims themselves -- as Ward Churchill demonstrated when he called the victims of 9/11 "Little Eichmanns."

When a horror is perpetrated, the reaction of horror will come out. But good little leftists have trained themselves nicely to rarely direct it at the actual monsters committing the horror.